Teacher Discussion Forums

I have recently started teaching a TOEFL preparation class. The hardest part for me is teaching writing. I am a native English speaker, and I have always done well in my own writing, but it is hard for me to know what to teach. For example, is a hook really important? Is it better to use words such as "first" and "second" in starting your paragraphs, or is it better not to? Or doesn't it matter? How important is it, really, for the thesis to state explicitly what will be covered in the body paragraphs, rather than just the general idea?

I would like to find sample essays that have been given a grade of six, or at least five and a half, by actual TOEFL graders. Different authors of different books have different opinions, and I would like to see samples of what the TOEFL graders actually give high grades to.

Can anyone help me find sample essays that have been given high grades?

Check this out:
http://www.toeflessays.com

Thank you!
Do you know who wrote this book? When I click on the link, I see that the author is listed as "anonymous."
My problem is knowing what types of essays actually get sixes from the TOEFL graders. Many books give examples of essays that the author of the book THINKS should get a six, but how do we know that the author is right? Fox example, some authors suggest that the essay start with a "hook." However, when I look at the few examples of essays provided by the TOEFL company itself, I don't see "hooks" on any of the essays that got sixes -- but I do seen some "hooks" on essays that got fours!
I am an experienced writer myself. I am now an ESL teacher, and for the past six months I have been teaching a TEOFL preparation class. I have some clear ideas of what I think a good essay should be, but I wish I could check my ideas against what the actual TOEFL graders judge to be a six.
So, do you know, did the essays in this book really get sixes from the actual TEOFL graders, or is it just some author's idea of what he or she thinks should get a six?

http://www.testmagic.com/

this site has lots of free essay samples. follow the links.

Thank you! This seems to be the real deal. This is what I have been looking for. I appreciate this very much.

I'm afraid that some of their essays are plagiarized, essay writing is very crucial task for everyone specially if you don't know the subject deeply, you need to study first the research introduction and the like.

Patrick

Here is what the scoring site says:
http://www.mytoeflsuccess.com/computer- ... coring.htm

I'm sure you have read it and showed it to the students but it doesn't always make much sense to them without actually seeing it put to use.
If you get the students to write the required time on an overhead sheet or on something that all the students can see at once, you can mark the essay and show the students what is good and what needs improvement.

I found that giving students an essay that is written by a native speaker makes the students very depressed because they think they can never write like that. You have to start where they are and build them up gradually. (It makes some students so depressed they just memorize up to 50 essays and then write the one on the closest topic word for word for the exam. The examiners can tell these are copied.)

Take into account the things that bring down their scores as much as what is required for a 6. If the testers say that not having enough variety in vocabulary brings their score down, then it follows that they need to work on their thesaurus to have a variety of vocabulary.

Using the essays of the best students in the class gives the students a closer model to follow and will take them up slowly to what is necessary.

There is a trick to planning the timing of the writing as well and you need to teach that too by giving them plenty of practice and showing them how to budget their time for planning, writing, reviewing, and checking. We made up an acronym for checking - can't remember what it was but it was check your capitals, check your punctuation, check tenses of verbs and matching nouns, check to see if you have connecting words, check to see if you have a variety of sentence types, if you have time look up the spelling of the words you aren't sure about in the rest of the exam to see if you can find the correct spelling, if you have time, think about other words to add variety to your vocabulary.

You can examine many examples and find the common thread to show them, but it is more difficult for the students to see this because they are usually concentrating on vocabulary and trying to understand the piece.

When they say that the students should use their own experience as examples, they mean it.

You could take the course to become a marker and then you would have an inside track on how to teach.

But in the end, it is the students who are good at English because they have prepared everything, read widely in all subjects and current issues and really know their English who do well on the exam. So you can also just give a really good English course that covers everything you can think of and do the same job.